Microsoft Technet hosts lot of documents about SharePoint, one of them is the “SharePoint Server 2010 capacity management: Software boundaries and limits” which describes software boundaries and limits of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.
Below is article index and some interesting points:
Basic definitions:
Boundaries: Static limits that cannot be exceeded by design
Thresholds: Configurable limits that can be exceeded to accommodate specific requirements
Supported limits: Configurable limits that have been set by default to a tested value.
Index:
Overview of boundaries and limits,
Article contains information to help you understand the tested performance and capacity limits of SharePoint Server 2010, and offers guidelines for how limits relate to acceptable performance. The test results and guidelines provided in article apply to a single SharePoint Server 2010 farm. Adding servers to the installation might not increase the capacity limits of the objects that are listed
- Boundaries, thresholds and supported limits
In SharePoint Server 2010, there are certain limits that are by design and cannot be exceeded, and other limits that are set to default values that may be changed by the farm administrator. There are also certain limits that are not represented by a configurable value, such as the number of site collections per Web application.
- How limits are established
- The Equalizer Metaphor
Limits and boundaries